Trump’s Economic Policies Aim at Our Past, Not Our Future

A post on Persuation by Jeff Tyler Syck about the problems with Trump’s MAGA prescription for revitalizing rural American communities caught my interest recently and prompted a post-length comment on his newsletter that I thought would work as the basis for post here on the Blog. I suggest a read of that post before diving into my discussion of the matter below. For those attention and time pressed, here’s a very condensed (also AI-derived and unapproved by the author) summary of his post:

The author argues that while J.D. Vance correctly identifies many of rural America’s ills—economic decline, drug addiction, broken families, and a crushed sense of meaning—his nationalist, MAGA-aligned prescription cannot cure them and may even deepen the underlying cultural damage. The author, a native of Central Appalachia, notes that earlier local pride centered on specific regions like Eastern Kentucky, but contemporary MAGA nationalism has shifted identities toward abstract patriotic branding without reversing economic stagnation or population loss. Nationalism, the piece contends, has historically weakened local communities and inadvertently cleared the path for globalist, universalist outlooks by eroding rooted, place-based ties. As an alternative, the author calls for a new synthesis of localism and open-society values: reviving local newspapers, preserving historic buildings and landscapes, investing in regional arts and culture such as bluegrass and Appalachian literature, and rebuilding a rural middle class able to sustain pluralism and innovation. This vision also depends on serious infrastructure and technological investment—roads, airports, broadband, and suitable siting of strategic industries like nuclear energy or weapons production—so that distinctive rural towns can support remote workers and modern economic activity without sacrificing their cultural character. Ultimately, the article credits Vance for elevating rural concerns but insists that nationalism offers “a nightmare” rather than hope, and that only a politics that restores localism while updating Appalachia for technological modernity can address the region’s spiritual and material crisis.

Here’s My Comment on that post with some light editing:

The entire thrust of the Trump Admin’s stated goal of revitalizing manufacturing is misaligned with the interest of economic growth and opportunity in rural America, IMO. That also applies to the economy in general, of course.

The share of manufacturing’s contribution to GDP is shrinking for very good reasons – lower average wages in the sector domestically, and lower-wage and other imput competition from foriegn competitors in the manufacturing sector compared to the service sector, being the most relevant factors. Growth, vitality, competitiveness, and leadership in the services sector are where America is getting ALL its trade surpluses with the world and comprise the vast lion’s share of overall GDP growth, NOT manufacturing – which even in other industrial and industrializing nations is consistently declining as a share of GDP. Declining industrial sectors are not the wave of the future economy, but of the past.

To give rural America a stake in the economic future of our nation we should be building the infrastructure, education, training and capacity for basing the service sector more firmly in rural American communities. The idea of creating a ‘renaissance’ of manufacturing in our rural communities is the direct equivalent of centering agriculture as those communities’ economic future – it is a pean to the past, not a door to a future of vibrant economic growth. 

Ultimately, this is the reason that MAGA’s prescription for economic revitalization of the American economcy is badly convceived. While I agree that there are strategic areas of manufacturing that have serious national secuirity implications (micro-electronics, aero and astronautics, robotics, explicitly defense industries, etc.) that we need to preserve and grow, I strongly disagree with the overall autarkic direction that Trump seems to be promoting with his trade and industrial ‘policy’ (such as it is) focusing on manufacturing of consumer goods. That is a path to continued decline and decelerating GDP growth, not to the forefront of the global economy where we need to remain.

My view is very tightly aligned in general terms with that of Fareed Zakariah and informed by the quatitative analysis he roughly outlines here:

The biggest caveat to this case are the exceptions I allude to above in ‘micro-electronics, aero and astronautics, robotics, explicitly defense industries, etc.’ This is why I fully supported Biden’s efforts at industrial policy in his Bipartisan Infrastructure Act (focusing on renewable energy tech, and telecom and transport modernizations and reinvestments) and the CHIPS and Science Act (micro-electronics and vital imputs to the defense sector). And it is largely why I have derided Trump efforts to defund those investments and subsidies in those same areas – mainly, it seems to me, because ‘Biden did it’, and not due to any particular policy reasons other than preferencing the fossil fuels sector for government support (which it manifestly does not need to remain globally competitive!).

In the end, we are perhaps fortunate in Trump’s fascination with the manufacturing sector for his tarrif tirades. He is NOT trying to shield the American services sector from foriegn competition with his misguided and farcical import taxes on Americans; thus, he is also unlikely to permanently impair the competitiveness and innovation of American firms in that vital and growing sector of our economy. We should all be greatful for such uncontested victories created by Trump’s utter obtuseness, I guess?

Such massive gaps in the MAGA vision, and flaws in its ‘strategic goals’ are the inevitable result of their fundamentally backward-looking viewpoint of making America great ‘AGAIN’; they remain obdurately ignorant of the ways America is already great, and getting greater all the time. All they can see in the present is failures and problems for which they prescribe the past as remedy: they remain absolutely and even willfully blind to the promise and opportunity of our present and future. This is why such Golden Age fairy tales told by so-called ‘conservative’ populists ultimately fail and are rejected in functioning democracies. They only know how to be reactionary as they try to condemn and contain the what is new in the world. They cannot see opportunity and promise in the new, so they cannot respond to it cogently and strategically.

So, it is our job as Democrats to make sure that the Democratic Party makes the case for America’s present and future greatness, and to keep our democracy intact and responsive to the electorate so that MAGA can fail politically – naturally and inevitably, and with as much grace and charity as we can summon – as it fails ideologically, economically, and practically. Voters don’t seem to much care what you have done for (or to them!) them in the past (asmdemonstrated by the general ignorance of the fact that Democratic governance consistently out-performs Republican governance on just about every metric of socio-economic progress) but only what you promise to do in the future. That is why our candidates have to make the positive case for our leadership and our policies to address voters’ biggest problems, not just point out the utter devastation MAGA is building toward with thier idiotic, oligarchical, authoritarian, and counter-productive policies, which can vouchsafed with cranks and commentators like myself!